LOCAL, TERRITORIAL, STATE, PROVINCE
Stop fossil fuel expansion
Pass short and longer-term local regulations that curb the ability of fossil fuel corporations to extract, transport, or promote their product in local jurisdictions.
PLACE HOLDER
What does this look like?
Cities, towns, and communities take proactive action to Stand Against Fossil Fuel Expansion by becoming SAFE cities that pass local laws to prohibit fossil fuel projects.
Implement local government resolutions that commit to immediately ending fossil fuel expansion in your city, town or community.
Pass a moratorium that immediately prohibits the development of any new fossil fuel infrastructure, beginning with wealthy and diversified countries that are best positioned to do so.
Just as a community in Northern Washington state, U.S did.
https://www.stand.earth/fossil-fuel-free/pacific-northwest
Follow through with legislation that makes these restrictions permanent, which also has the additional effect of protecting against environmental hazards like oil spills.
Prohibit the transport or storage of fossil fuels through or in your jurisdiction.
As South Portland, Maine did in 2014, [RRJ3] when tar sands were no longer allowed to pass through the city.
https://www.stand.earth/page/fossil-fuel-free/how-local-residents-protected-south-portland-tar-sands
Or as Portland, Oregon did in 2016, when it became the first major municipality in the U.S. to prohibit the bulk storage of fossil fuels, essentially ceasing oil trains from passing through the jurisdiction
Challenge Paris Agreement violations
Hold specific polluting corporations, or groups of polluting corporations, to account for their climate inaction by suing them for failing to comply with the Paris Agreement commitments.
What does this look like?
Sue countries, polluting corporations or related actors for violating the right to a safe and clean environment, including by failing to have adequate, ambitious, and just climate action plans that are fully aligned with the commitments of the Paris Agreement to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
This argument led to the successful challenge in the U.K., where a new runway at Heathrow International Airport was ruled illegal since it was not in line with the U.K.’s Paris Agreement commitments.
Similarly, incompatibility between Netherland’s climate action plans and the Paris Agreement commitments has led civil society organizations and over 17,000 citizens to sue Royal Dutch Shell [RRJ2] for failing to align its business practices with the action necessary.
Increase access to justice for frontline communities
Implement a variety of measures to ensure communities on the front lines of the climate crisis have access to legal mechanisms for advancing climate justice.
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What does this look like?
Climate cases in the Global South generally only indirectly implicate climate change, among other reasons, because of the limited access to justice[1]. These challenges could be in part addressed by advancing subnational/local strategies that:
Develop or strengthen inclusive processes that allow communities to direct access to legal actions. Tools that can help achieve this include:
Strengthen or advocate for effective partnerships amongst governments and between governments and civil society[2], to:
Organize sources of data: Case management from legal aid providers, both government and civil society, can be beneficial to understand trends in justice needs, who is lacking access to justice, geographic spread of justice services, what assistance communities need to resolve disputes, the experience of marginalized groups, and the utility and impact of legal aid and paralegal services[3].
Establish a financial fund that can support legal assistance needs.
Establish programs with law faculties that can support the legal cases.
Strengthen opportunities for cross sub-national learning on effective mechanisms that allow communities to access legal actions directly, allowing actors to:
Learn from and share best practices in order to strengthen case management and data collection.
Strengthen sub-national South-South collaboration, in particular by developing training programs that better enable local communities to access and use legal systems.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-international-law/ajil-unbound-by-symposium/jacqueline-peel-and-jolene-lin-transnational-climate-litigation-the-contribution-of-the-global-south
[2] https://www.justiceinitiative.org/uploads/6a836982-665b-4b1b-bdcb-16022af08aa9/a2j-workshop-20170404.pdf
[3] https://www.justiceinitiative.org/uploads/6a836982-665b-4b1b-bdcb-16022af08aa9/a2j-workshop-20170404.pdf
Raise public awareness about climate denial
Through education, media engagement, and resolutions, build political will for polluting industry liability and denormalise corporate impunity.
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What does this look like?
Raise awareness, inform, and educate decision-makers and the public regarding corporations’ role in exacerbating climate change, the need to protect climate policies from vested corporate interests, as well as the strategies and tactics used by corporations to interfere with the setting and implementation of climate action and liability measures at every level of governance.
Increase awareness through public materials, media, and local resolutions and/or investigations that expose the fossil fuel industry’s (and other polluting industries’) historic and ongoing practice of using individuals, front groups and trade organizations to act, openly or covertly, on their behalf or to take action to further industry interests
Challenge attempts to pre-empt liability locally
Play a watchdog role, exposing and challenge insidious attempts at the local level by polluting corporations to seize opportunities to avoid liability for harms done.
What does this look like?
Coordinate with government officials and decision-makers at all levels of governance to ensure that cities and communities have the ability to pursue liability against polluting industries without the possibility of pre-emption at the regional, country, and/or international level.
Identify and challenge attempts by the industry to preempt local liability claims for past, current, or future harms through legislation, voluntary agreements, litigation, or other means.